Soccer slams door on player transfers

For years, local soccer players were like free agents, permitted to move from club to club without much of a roadblock.
Unlike hockey, where residency dictates you play where you live, soccer permitted player movement unheard of in most other sports.
Not surprisingly, allowing free player movement had its positives and negatives.
Some teams stockpiled top players, while lesser teams – often from smaller clubs – struggled to hold on to their better players.
For years now, some intercity coaches would brazenly “poach” top players from rival teams in an effort to stack their team.
Naturally, this led to some bitter feelings between clubs.
Teams on the receiving end of imported players – often Lakeshore and Pierrefonds – could argue they were merely building toward elite AAA status, which begins at the U-14 level under the club reforms brought down years ago by Soccer Quebec.
But teams on the losing end of player transfers saw no light at the end of the development tunnel. “We develop our players, then the big clubs swoop in and whisk them away.”
A form of soccer Darwinism had taken hold here, for better or worse.
Well, the Lac St. Louis Regional Soccer Association has decided to nix player movement between clubs for the upcoming season for players between the ages of 9 and 13.
Apparently, there will be “exceptions” to the rule. (Aren’t there always exceptions in soccer?)
Here’s an example: If a club does not field a AA team at the U-11, U-12 and U-13 levels, a player can ask to transfer to a club that does offer such a AA program.
But those transfer requests must be approved by the club’s technical director and then the region.
If the light is still green, the imported player’s family is on the hook for a $300 transfer fee.
This non-refundable free agent tax will discourage some parents, but not all.
How much this new rule affects the soccer landscape remains to be seen.
Lakeshore president Nick Pantemis has already issued a “hands off” notice to his coaches: “Please do not accept out of club players at your upcoming tryouts in November-December.”
But does this new measure come too late to even the playing field?
So much player movement has already taken place in recent years, this may be a case of closing the barn door after all the thoroughbreds have already left.

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